What is the doctrine of continuous creation? Is God continually creating?

Everything a man speaks of as created exists as much in dark as in light. The continued exercise of creative power, I apprehend, we are very ignorant about; that it exists we know and upholds, which is the same thing - save the exercise of divine will.

176 I do not say this proves any particular miracles to be true, but it proves the reasoning as to their credibility and possibility utterly foundationless and false. Whatever power produced or was the origin of the first, may be of the other, and is just as active in one as in the other. All the appeal to experience is only to say that the continued action of general laws, which they can explain as a mere fact, is not the same as the power that originated them, which they cannot explain at all. And even this, which in a certain sense may be admitted, so far as that it is a different kind of exercise of it, they cannot say. For my own part, I am satisfied that the force or power which created and set the universe in movement is a power which keeps it in movement. The material world would not move itself unless it was moved, and the power and will which started it must always operate to continue it, or it could not continue. This is the true conservation of force: the perpetual operation of divine will, just as it operated at the beginning in setting what appear now as general laws a-going. It is always exactly the same thing.

This force was acted by and followed a certain order in starting, by will and power; and it continues by the same power and will every instant. It has never been proved that the power which sustains is not the same power which at first originated. Science knows no more of one than the other. It only knows phenomena and the recognition of general laws by which they are governed, that is, the fact of constant sequence, or uniform effects when all is already there, the whole of which is as to its existence confessed to be a casual circumstance, just as a miracle is. Both are known by sense or testimony, and by no other means.

33 So when it is said, If infinite, it cannot become (that is, a cause), this is merely a loose employment of the word "become." It becomes nothing in se by being a cause; it remains absolutely the same. Something is produced outside itself by its will. If infinitude meant material extended, then indeed it would be impossible. It will be said that it acts, while before it was quiescent. It does not change, but displays itself. Display of self is not change, or self is not displayed. Had it been always displayed, it would be in a limited, not absolute, state. If creation were always, then it was not creation, or display had a necessary relation. Will was part of the Absolute. It displays will in creating and in not always creating. Had it always created, it would not have been a display of self in this respect. It was absolute and sufficient in itself: this was displayed by only creating when it pleased. By creating it displays that it was not necessarily quiescent (that is, dependent on something, not absolute).

I notice that the word for created is in a slightly different tense in verses 16 and 17. It says in verse 16 that "… by Him were all things created". That is a once for all action, but the second reference, at the end of the verse, signifies something accomplished in the past which continues to the present. I think this ties in beautifully with the fact that He sustains the creation He has brought into being.

*"Upholding all things by the word of His power." I believe it is important, and has been carefully insisted upon, that there is as constant an exercise of force needed in what people call general laws (gravitation, etc.) as in the calling forth of the worlds out of nothing.

Hence, as we by the enabling of the Holy Spirit look behind the whole scheme of creation, we see that the Son fills no secondary or subordinate place. He alone is the Supreme Architect and Builder, and He is also the end and object of its existence. But even more is revealed. To enhance His glory yet further, the Spirit gives the additional revelation that "all things subsist together by (in virtue of) Him," (4). The Son's omnipotence continues in unceasing activity towards the universe. The Son of the Father's love maintains the existence and energy and functioning of all created things, ever and always.

Fifthly, the Son is the Upholder of all things by the word of His power. Even if men allow that there must be a first cause, they would seek to shut out God from all present activity in creation. They conceive of a creation, as one has said “sufficient for itself, a perfect machine made to run eternally without the hand that made it.” The truth is that, not only was the universe brought into being by the Son, but, it is also maintained by the Son. Not a star can hold on its way, nor a sparrow fall to the ground, without Him.

It is evident that no creature can subsist in truth, save in absolute dependence on God. It must be kept to be in the truth - cannot subsist without it - for, if it is not dependent, and if dependence is real, it must be kept. It has lost its place of creature, if it is not in the truth of it. The first principle of its being, as such, is that dependence; it is in virtue of creation, i.e., it subsists in relationship with the Creator, and with the Creator as such, and does not exist if the Creator has not created it - exists in virtue of His power as Creator, and of His will too; hence, the moment it has made itself, in will, independent (in fact it cannot) it has falsified its existence - its existence, morally, is a lie in opposition to the truth of its necessary condition, that by which alone it exists. Thus dependence is alone the truth of any creature.

But, if this be so, there must be an active process of sustainment by Him who creates, otherwise the dependence is in vain; hence, whenever the creature is left to its responsibility, free to the action of its own will, its first act in will is its fall - it has gone out of dependence - it has left God - and the truth of its position with God, its subsistence, if it subsists, is a lie, and will becomes, not a mere part of nature, setting the rest in activity, but a will of its own, i.e., rebellion against God.

34 I admit creation is an object of faith, not of knowledge; I can only know it when created. But it is no coming out of God as emanation, and going back. What I am in relation to, God has formed according to the apprehensions of it He has created in me. There is no existence independent of Him, nor place where He is not sustainingly; but He does not exist in it. All these difficulties the simple words of scripture make as plain as possible: "God created"; but "by him all things consist." Their difficulties arose from making pure intellect God. Then you must have the intelligent and the intelligible (that is, ideal objects in the mind at least).

We read that "by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him and for Him; and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist." By Him. The force which has summoned the worlds out of nothingness into being and which upholds them in being, is His; He wields it; He is the one Producer and Sustainer of all created existence. For Him. He is not as Arianism afterwards pretended, merely an inferior workman, creating for the glory of a higher Master, for a God superior to Himself; He is the End of created things as well as their immediate Source, and in living for Him every creature finds at once the explanation and the law of its being. For He is before all things, and by Him all things consist" (Liddon).